Video: Lauryn Hill Debuts New Song “Fearless Vampire Killer” Live in DC

The video quality is terrible, I know. But as a friend of mine once said: don’t matter if the camera is a little shaky when the footage from is from Mars. Whatever gamma rays or post-Aquarian vibrations recently disturbed D’Angelo‘s cryogenic slumber seem to have effected Ms. Lauryn Hill as well because she performed a brand new song titled “Fearless Vampire Killer” wednesday night at the Warner theater in Washington, DC. I guess if you want to be super-technical that was not the debut because she apparently also performed the song at the House of Blues in Boston a few nights ago, but the available audio from that night is truly unlistenable–and the images are almost non-existent, because Ms. Hill insisted on keeping the stage bathed in darkness for the entire song.

Even at last night’s show, so much of the backing music is lost and the chorus so deadpan that at times it is hard to tell if Lauryn is road-testing a new song or simply informing the audience that she is, in real life, a fearless vampire-killer. By all firsthand accounts, though, the song is “simply amazing” and “very powerful and full of energy and actually had audience members singing along by the end to something they had never heard before.” There have been rumblings of a comeback being staged by Lauryn ever since she gave birth to her sixth child, Marley Hill, in July–so perhaps we’re starting to see the fruits of that behind-the-scenes activity now. Chase the vampire (above) and we will update y’all as better audio/footage comes online.

ok true, i should have caught that title! However, neither the Bad Brains version of “FVKs” on their 1982 LP or any of the live versions i can see online have anything like that hook or melody-line, so for the moment i think it is still correct to describe it as a new song, as is being reported elsewhere. Maybe someone who is a deeper Bad Brains stan than me can determine if the lyrics she is singing in the beginning/buildup are the same as their version? the guitar licks sound sort of similar in spirit to me, but not really the same: